Teacher Resume Template

The education profession is a very specialized field with its own particular set of skills and experience that needs to be emphasized on a resume in order for that resume to be effective and guarantee a job interview. Teachers need to show an enthusiasm for educating young people and expanding their minds, as well as effectiveness in written communication. In the teaching field, a resume isn’t just a summary of education and experience or a selling tool to get your foot in the door; it is also a sort of “pre interview audition.” It shows your writing skills and ability to concisely organize thoughts and concepts with the written word. This is why a well written teacher resume is so important: your writing goes a long way to show your knowledge and abilities. Conversely, hiring managers may say, “why should I interview this person for a teaching job when they can’t even write a good resume?”

Knowing how important writing a great resume is for teachers, it is very important to follow certain guidelines. The resume needs to be properly formatted with no spelling or grammatical errors. It needs to be concise and get the key points across without being too wordy. You need to get the point across that you are an intelligent professional of the highest quality, and that these are characteristics you can pass on to your students. For formatting, it’s important to summarize your career objective, work experience, education, skills and any other details in concise, bulleted lists that get right to the point of each detail listed. Wall to wall text is intimidating and usually goes unread. It’s important to give readers the “breathing room” afforded by white space on your page layout. Format is so important for a teacher resume, since your writing directly correlates to your job.

After format, a teacher must pay attention to how the resume is targeted. A generic resume is no good at all. Instead, teachers should scrutinize their skills and experiences, compare them to the job at hand, and write the resume based on where these two areas mix. This goes much further to “sell” you to an employer than a generic resume does. If you have a lot of experience, it’s better to write a chronological format resume the focuses more on this strong point. If you are just getting into the field, perhaps fresh out of school, then it’s better to use a skills-based “functional” resume.

Here is an example of a chronological resume:

Objective: To further my career in education by obtaining a full time professor position at a growing university where I can apply my talent and enthusiasm for teaching to augment a well rounded staff.

Worked as a teacher’s aide in the introductory courses during my senior year at University of Perth

As you can see, Rachel has a lot of experience teaching at both the university and high school levels. As such, this needs to be spotlighted first. Yes, her Master’s degree is very impressive, but her real world experience, including working two teaching jobs at once, is even more special. Combine that with the fact that she has real world experience in the field where she will be teaching, and you can see why she chose to focus on experience first. Earlier in her career, Rachel would not have this strength to lead from. In this case, she would write a functional resume instead, choosing to focus more on her skills.

Here’s what this would look like:

Career Objective: To use the knowledge gained through my Master’s degree program and my real world experience in the information technology field to attain a teaching position in the computer science department at a competitive, forward-thinking high school.

Skills:

Effective at multitasking; balanced degree studies and work with no negative impact on either.

Assisted professors in introductory courses, filled in when necessary.

Gave feedback to professors when rewriting the curriculum and courses.

In this case, Rachel is completing her Master’s degree and looking for her first job. Her skill set, which includes an amazing ability to multitask – evidenced later by her work and studies – needs to be put on display right away. That, combined with her degrees, is the most impressive trait right now. Later, she uses her limited work experience to back up the skills she listed. This is a great example of a functional resume.

Whether you’re an experienced teacher with years in the field who is looking for a new position to further your career, or you’re an upcoming graduate trying to land that first teaching job at a high school, it is vital to write a flawless and effective resume. Impressing hiring managers with your professionalism and your writing ability is the first step on your way to getting the teaching job you want, whether it’s your first job or just your next job.

Disclaimer: All information provided on this website is made available to be used as a guide only. Use of this web site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.